Watch This!

We've been watching a lot of Olympics at our house. Have you? The television goes on Every Night these days, and this is very strange because, at our house, from the end of March Madness through the beginning of football season, we usually turn the cable off. Right off. Completely off. The thinking is that we all have better things to do out of doors during the summer than to sit in front of the television.

But we turned the cable back on little early this year due, of course, to the Olympics. And I think you can hardly blame us. The opening ceremonies alone were worth it, and then there's that Michael Phelps guy, and all the diving, and the gymnastics.

Our children are loving this. Yes, they all are. In fact, this unbridled television viewing-- not suspended by screen allotments (usually an hour a day) and continuing on until well past Everyone's bedtime (it is summer, after all)-- is a Feast for our children. They watch the qualifying heats, they watch the competition, they watch the commercials (ah! commercials!). They live in continuous awe of their newfound fortune. How long can it possibly last?

I think the favorite is the gymnastics. That stuff is Amazing. So Very. How do they do these things? The contortions, the twisting, the tumbling, the vaulting oneself into the stratosphere by sheer will- and leg-power. You don't want to miss this. You don't. You want to watch and watch and watch.

Which is why Emma became so annoying the other night. Yes, she did. For her seven-year-old self, the watching just wasn't enough. She was Inspired. She wanted to Be a Gymnast. She knew she could do it. And she did.

In the lovely open space just next to our little seating/television viewing area in our family room, Emma worked on perfecting her cartwheel. She twisted. She turned. She darted across the short space and flung her weight onto her hands, kicking her legs in the air.

And she implored us to watch.

"Watch this! Watch this!" she would say, and we turned our heads and watched her, and dutifully praised her, and were, from time to time, Duly Impressed. But this was her first real go at gymnastics and, with such limited experience, so also was her performance limited. The first, second and third cartwheels really looked a Great Deal like the seventeenth and even the eighteenth. Meanwhile, in Beijing, the Chinese Olympic team was, with what appeared to be really little effort, Blowing Our Minds.

"Watch! Mom, watch!"

"I am watching the Olympics right now, Emma."

Is that okay to say? Is it? I mean, these are the 2008 Olympics. They will not happen again. If previous experience has shown me anything, I can be fairly certain that I will not watch gymnastics of this caliber again for four more years.

But Emma Grace is seven.

"Watch how fast I can run, Mom," she tells me, and she is off, running through the rooms that compose the first floor of our house, hoping that I'm counting, surprised by her own speed.

"Watch me!" and she shows me (again) that she can whistle.

"Watch!" and she is jumping rope.

The boys have been "into" skateboarding this summer. They have learned how to ollie; they are working on kick-flips; they have grown their hair long. And they say it, too:

"Mom, watch this ollie!" "Mom, watch this kick-flip!" Sometimes they are successful ollies, sometimes they are successful kick-flips. Sometimes I am standing with my hands spilling the mail onto the driveway, in the heat, with mosquitoes biting my shins.

"Watch this!"

I don't remember if mosquitoes were an issue that summer evening long ago in Pittsburgh when my friends and siblings and I held a circus in our backyard. Yes, we had a circus: me and my sisters, some of the Munns girls, Megan Fergus, and Janet Fernando. All we did, really, was to hang from our knees from the rings, and work our way across the parallel bars, and maybe do a cartwheel or two. And at the end I, followed by two friends, walked the Entire Length of the split-rail fence, and turned around at the end, and walked back. I loved doing that. I did it all the time. I'm sure that, by the time we held the circus, my mother had seen me do it a thousand times from the kitchen sink window.

But for this circus, I'm pretty sure she watched.

"Watch this, Mom! Watch!"

I haven't said those words to my mother in a Really Long Time.

It's a privilege, you know, and a short-lived one at that. To be the one who is asked, I mean. To have one's attention sought. To be the One who matters.

"Watch this, Mom!"

I'm watching.